West Valley zoo gets special present with a white-tiger cub

Details: 16501 W. Northern Ave. Open seven days a week, 365 days a year, including all holidays.

Exhibits: Zoo exhibits are open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (last zoo admission is at 5 p.m.) Aquarium exhibits are open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Daytime admission includes access to the zoo and aquarium. Special reduced evening admission to the aquarium only is available after 5 p.m.

Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium is ringing in the new year with Winter, a snow-white tiger cub.

Born at another zoo in November, Winter can be seen at Wildlife World’s baby-animal nursery. She has blue eyes and a white coat, and her stripes are very light, giving her an almost all-white appearance.

Winter receives around-the-clock care by Wildlife World keepers and is given bottles of formula several times a day. Over the next few months, she will begin the transition to include meat in her diet. By spring she will be large enough to move from the nursery into a permanent outdoor habitat. Currently weighing in at 8 to 10 pounds, Winter may grow to up to 400 pounds in just a few years.

Total wild-tiger population estimates vary around approximately 3,000. Habitat loss and degradation, along with increased poaching, remain the biggest threats to tiger survival. Of the nine subspecies of tiger, three are confirmed extinct, and another hasn’t been seen in the wild for about 50 years, with only a handful of remaining individuals living in zoos in Asia.

This past fall has been a busy one for Wildlife World visitors and staff with the grand opening of a fourth aquarium building that features Amazon River Monsters and an endangered sea turtle. There have been several significant births, including a reticulated giraffe, a tapir and a jaguar cub named “Fitz” after Arizona Cardinals’ receiver Larry Fitzgerald.

Jaguars are the largest variety of feline found in the Western Hemisphere and third in size behind lions and tigers. Males can grow to about 200 pounds and are known to have the strongest bite of any feline species. Another species found throughout the Amazonian rainforest is the Brazilian or South American tapir. A distant cousin to the horse and rhinoceros, the tapir has a notable prehensile snout used to forage for plants and leaves near sources of water.

Visitors can see Wildlife World’s tallest baby animal on display with the rest of the reticulated giraffe herd. Young giraffes grow rather quickly — this young male should nearly double in height within about one year. These young animals will likely figure prominently in the facility’s expansion projects, which include a new Safari park expected to open in late 2013 and an Americas adventure land the following year.

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